“All right. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” The woman paused. “Try to get some rest.”
Wordlessly Shannon returned to the straight-backed chair where she’d been sitting for the last two days. She sat and, after a while, took Rafe’s hand once more in hers. The hard calluses on his fingers and hands gave her reassurance that he couldn’t be permanently harmed. She held on to him, afraid that if she let go, he might not return.
The beeping of the IV bag woke Shannon and made her think of Kwan-Sook. She blinked blearily at the bed and hoped to find Rafe looking back at her.
He still slept.
“You’re awake,” the woman said as she hung a new bag. “Good. Allison wants to talk to you.”
“Why?” Shannon asked.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”
The front room of the basement the group occupied wasn’t much better than the one they’d put Rafe in. There was more furniture, a few chairs and cots. An entertainment/video game center with a stack of DVDs and games sat against one wall. A bookcase held a lot of tattered books in English and Cantonese.
The woman pointed Shannon to the notebook computer on a small metal secretarial desk. With the other members of the team in the room, private conversation was out of the question.
“Hello, Shannon,” Allison said. Her image showed on the computer monitor.
At first Shannon had been reluctant about a face-to-face meeting with Allison when she’d seen the built-in video camera hookup on the computer. She hadn’t been able to do much beyond shower in the small cubicle adjoining the basement area.
But when the monitor opened on a view of Allison, Shannon saw that the days had worn on her, as well.
“Hello, Allison,” Shannon said. “I know we’ve had our problems in the past, but if there’s anything you can do for Rafe, you need to do it.”
“He’s a friend of mine. If there was anything I could do, I would. We’ll give it another couple of days and see where we are. He’s strong. In North Korea—”
“He survived torture and imprisonment for months,” Shannon said. “I know.”
Allison smiled a little at that. “I thought I recognized your hacker friend’s touch when he raided those files.”
“He’s a good guy,” Shannon said. “He was just trying to help me out. Don’t do anything to him.”
“Actually,” Allison said, “I was thinking of offering him a job.”
Shannon laughed before she knew she was going to. “If you do, he’ll be blown away. He’s dreamed of being spy guy.”
Allison laughed, too, and she looked grateful to have the distraction.
“Rafe Santorini is a fantastic guy, Shannon.”
“I know.”
“You don’t find many like him.”
“I know that, too.”
“I heard what he did.”
Shannon took a deep breath. “The general consensus is that it was a pretty dumb thing to do. Especially for me.”
“Rafe believes in you,” Allison said.
Despite her circumstances, Shannon took pride in that. But she knew the truth, too. “He doesn’t even know me. We never met until the night Vincent Drago tried to kill me.” And that seemed like a million years ago now.
“He knew you longer than that,” Allison said. “I’d had him watching you for weeks before that night with Drago.”
“Why? Because of everything that happened at Athena?” Some of Shannon’s anger returned full force.
“No. Because I’ve been tracking the person who’s been tipping you concerning the news stories you’ve been breaking.”
“How did you find out about that?”
“Lately you’ve been everywhere we’ve been.”
“We?”
Allison grimaced. “I’m tired. Just let it go at that. I can’t talk about it.”
“Just like you can’t talk about Lab 33 and Aldritch Peters?”
“Just like that.” Allison took a drink of the coffee at her elbow.
“The person that’s been giving you those tips isn’t a good person.”
“The people I brought down weren’t good people,” Shannon said.
“Not all of them, no. But some of them were just people who made mistakes. The person tipping you didn’t give you that information to square the scales of justice. It was for profit, pure and simple.”
“You have proof of that?” Shannon challenged.
“I do. When there’s time, I could prove it to you.”
“So you could prove I was wrong?”
“So I could prove you were taken advantage of,” Allison said.
“I wasn’t taken advantage of.”
“Rafe was the one who made me start thinking about what might really have happened all those years ago at Athena.”
Shannon folded her arms. “We don’t need to talk about that.”
“I think we do. This—all of this—started there and then.” Allison looked at her. “You still say that I sent you the e-mails that told you to frame Josie Lockworth.”
Shannon bridled at that. “You know you did. And I know you lied about it to save yourself. Your mom would have killed you.”
“My mom,” Allison said, “knew me better than I thought she did. She thought I had sent those e-mails you say you got.”
“I did get them.”
“We’ll get back to that. The point is that I wasn’t a very generous teenager. I had my issues. I wanted to beat Rainy Miller at everything. Rainy wasn’t like that. She only wanted to do her best. Unfortunately for me, her best in those days was generally better than what I had to give.” Allison paused. “Did you know she had a crush on my brother David? And that he had one on her?”
Shannon smiled at the memory. “Joe College with the incredible hook shot on the basketball court? Of course I did. A lot of us did. But with Rainy you could just see it was deeper than that.”
“I know. But back then I sabotaged that relationship before it could get started. Rainy had ended up in some hard times and Mom had taken her in. I knew she had my mom and dad wrapped around her little finger—which I know now wasn’t really the way it was—but I didn’t want her to have David, too. So I broke them up before they had a chance to get started.” Allison took a deep breath. “I only recently got to help fix that.”
Looking at Allison, Shannon was surprised to find that she felt badly for her. “You were young, Allison. When you’re young, you make mistakes.”
“I know. I keep telling myself that. Maybe one of these days I’ll believe it.”
“Just like the mistake you made in sending me that e-mail to frame Josie. Admittedly, I shouldn’t have done it, but that was my mistake. If you’d have just admitted—”
“Shannon,” Allison interrupted. “I didn’t send those e-mails. There was nothing for me to admit to.”
Shannon closed her mouth. She couldn’t believe after everything that had gone on, after what they’d just said to each other, that Allison was going to continue to deny what had happened.
Shannon’s anger got the better of her. With all the strain of worrying about Rafe and being virtually held prisoner by people she didn’t know, she was ready to explode.
“Before you reach critical mass,” Allison said, “listen to me for just a moment. I think you were set up.”
Chapter 27
A llison’s statement caught Shannon so much by surprise that she temporarily forgot her anger. “You think what?”
“That you were set up. Look at what we’re dealing with—a master computer cracker capable of getting the dirt on what seems like everybody. There were actually two people involved in this. I know who the first one was, but I don’t know who the second one is.”
Everything suddenly got confusing to Shannon. “What do you mean, two people?”
“What I’m going to tell you now is classified,” Allison said. “I only this morning got permission from President Monihan to tell you and Rafe’s
team.”
Shannon was suddenly conscious of everyone in the room paying attention to the conversation.
“Her name,” Allison said, “was Jackie Cavanaugh.”
As Shannon sat and listened to everything Allison said about the woman, she grew more and more amazed.
“You think this enemy of your mother’s set me up?” Shannon asked. She felt dazed. Her head spun. Everything made sense. Sort of.
“I do,” Allison said. “You’d have to study the woman’s profile. I had an expert put together a forensic composite of Jackie Cavanaugh.”
“Did Chesca Thorne do the profile?” Shannon asked.
Allison looked a little surprised. At first it seemed as though she wasn’t going to answer, then she decided to keep everything out in the open. “Yes. How did you know?”
“I’ve been keeping tabs on her career at the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and have thought about doing an interview with her. I knew she was an Athena graduate.”
“Chesca did it. When I talked to her about you and everything that happened with Josie, she told me that long-range planning like this was something Cavanaugh was capable of. If Cavanaugh was going to try to bring down Mom’s school—the one dream that Mom cherished above all others outside of her family—she needed someone from inside.”
“Since that wasn’t possible,” Shannon said, feeling the pieces click into place, “she decided to create an inside person.”
Allison nodded. “Cavanaugh knew about my rivalry with Rainy. She also picked up on the fact that I was more intense about it.”
“So she wrote those e-mails to me and pretended to be you.”
“Yes.” Allison sighed. “There’s no way to know for sure at this point. But it feels right.” She paused. “For what it’s worth, I apologize. And I’m sorry about what happened to you.”
Shannon had to take a deep breath before she could speak. “Me, too.” Before she knew it, tears brimmed in her eyes. She felt embarrassed. Then she saw that Allison was crying, too.
“When you get back,” Allison said, “we’re going to have a long talk.”
Shannon nodded. “Okay. But in the meantime we’ve still got a job to do.”
“We?” Allison looked at her.
“I talked to Dr. Chow about the three egg-babies that he helped Aldritch Peters create before he came to Lab 33.”
“I know. I copied the conversation, as well.”
“You did?” Shannon couldn’t believe it.
“Sorry,” Allison said. “It’s this spy business.”
Shannon laughed. “Then you’ve had the same thing I’ve had all this time and you haven’t seen it.”
Allison frowned. “Had what?”
“A way to find out about the egg-babies.”
“How?” Allison looked confused.
“While he was talking to me, Dr. Chow mentioned that before Aldritch Peters canned him he’d fired all of his staff.”
“His staff isn’t going to know every—”
“Not his staff,” Shannon agreed. “But I haven’t met a doctor yet whose head nurse didn’t know more about the office and the people they dealt with than the doctor.”
A pleased smile spread across Allison’s face. “I think you may have something.”
“I know I do,” Shannon said confidently. “It’s just that here, in this country, I wouldn’t know where to begin looking. I thought I was stymied. But that was before I had the resources of a spy.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Allison.”
Allison looked up.
“I want in on this,” Shannon said. “It’s my story.”
A troubled look filled Allison’s face. “This isn’t going to be one that you can tell.”
“I know.” Shannon tried to tell herself that she could accept that. “But I’d still like to close it out. I’m a professional. I don’t like to leave part of a story hanging.”
After a moment Allison nodded. “Rafe is of the opinion that you could get a rock to tell you its story. If I find this woman, she may not want to talk.”
“Find her,” Shannon said. “I can get her to talk. Bet on it.”
“Okay,” Allison said. “If I find her, she’s yours.”
“When,” Shannon said. “When you find her. Rafe said you could do anything.”
“Wow,” a thick voice said from the back of the room. “It sounds like I promise an awful lot while I’m shot near to death.”
Startled and excited, Shannon turned in her seat.
Rafe Santorini, head bandaged and still looking groggy, stood in the doorway.
Shannon wanted to go to him, but then she didn’t know what would happen. It could be very uncomfortable for both of them. But her heart sped up and she felt a tremendous weight lift off her.
“About time you woke up,” she said.
Rafe smiled and looked a little uncertain. “I must have been really, really tired.” He looked around. “I need to know what I missed—maybe even what day it is—and something hot to eat. I noticed I’ve been on a liquid diet for a while.”
It took Allison four days to find Lin Ci’an, who had been Dr. Chow Bao’s head nurse for twenty years until she’d been released from his service nearly thirty years ago. Allison had finally been able to find the woman through census and hospital records. As it turned out, Ci’an had never left the medical field. Getting those records, Allison had admitted, had been hard.
“Impossible would have taken a little longer,” Allison had told Rafe.
Ci’an was a brown nut of a woman in her seventies. Despite her age, she had no infirmities and her mind was incredibly clear and uncluttered. Her gaze was piercing and direct.
She was, Rafe knew to his bones, a survivor above all things.
Shannon contacted her in the clinic she worked at in Hong Kong. Dr. Chow had arranged a job for her when he’d let her go from the research lab.
Now she sat in the luxurious hotel suite Allison had booked for the “interview” Shannon was conducting. As it turned out, Ci’an was a fan of Western television and she had a particular ax to grind concerning the rights of women in China.
Rafe hadn’t picked up on that at first, even when he’d heard Shannon talking with the woman. But Shannon had.
Seated at the desk, Rafe pretended to be the camera operator. They had a two-camera setup on the woman, giving the talk the feel of a real television interview. Allison watched, hooked in through the camera feed.
Shannon was incredibly patient. The woman obviously wouldn’t talk about the times with Dr. Chow easily. She avoided them every time Shannon headed the conversation in that direction.
Rafe didn’t think he would have been able to handle an interrogation that lasted that long. Shannon worked the woman carefully, getting into safe territory, bringing laughter, then tears, and heading once more back to Dr. Chow. Then retreat and do it all over again.
The cursor on the computer screen in front of Rafe suddenly sped across the screen.
She’s incredible.
Rafe knew that Allison was talking about Shannon. He put his hands on the keyboard and pecked his way through a message.
Tell her that someday.
I’ve never seen her work like this before. When you see the news stories, they’re chopped and cut. You don’t realize how much time you have to spend to get a story.
Yeah, the same way you do reports and situation evals.
Shannon kept hammering away, politely and firmly.
You two have a lot in common.
I know.
The break came almost an hour later. Shannon knew it was there, just beyond her reach for the last forty minutes. The woman had a secret she wanted to give up. Shannon felt it, and it drove her crazy not to be able to reach it.
Then, in a brief moment of clarity, Shannon realized how to get to it.
“China as a country isn’t very friendly to girl children,” Shannon said. “Since I’ve been here I’ve
heard stories of women who take their newborns home and feed them oleander poison. Others instantly give them up for adoption or sell them on the black market.”
“Regrettably,” Ci’an said, “that’s all true.” She was well-spoken for someone who was primarily self-taught. “With the government enforcing only one child per family, families want boys who will grow up and care for them. At present, the male population coming of marrying age outnumbers females in a four-to-three ratio.”
“Doesn’t sound like it’s going to be fun to be in the dating circles here,” Shannon said lightly. “Unless you’re a woman.”
“No,” Ci’an said. “Not even the women will be happy. In China women aren’t prized as individuals. They’re brood stock and homemakers. Useful only for producing boy children and cleaning house.”
“I’ve talked to a lot of women who, like you, have jobs,” Shannon pointed out.
“We still remain the exception to the rule. Most women have terrible lives.”
“Wouldn’t it be good if there was a way to make China take pride in and see the worth of its women?”
“It would, but I fear that day will never come.”
“When I was talking to Dr. Chow before his unfortunate death,” Shannon said, “he was talking to me about some research he was doing that would enhance the standing of women. Through genetic manipulation.”
According to the news, Dr. Chow had been the victim of an unsuccessful robbery. Allison had tried to track the dead men, but the Hong Kong police had no tangible leads that she could find in their files.
Ci’an shook her head. “I don’t want to speak badly of the dead, but Dr. Chow’s research was no good. I saw those three girls that were made in Dr. Peters’s laboratory. All of them were cursed.”
Shannon tried not to let her excitement show. The time was now, but she had to be careful how she progressed. If she pushed too hard, she’d lose the woman.
She started to speak, then decided against it. Silence was sometimes an interviewer’s best friend. People grew nervous when it got quiet, and that was especially true when they were on television.
Beneath the Surface Page 20